Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End

Nicola James, Nurse Consultant in prostate cancer

Reason you chose this book

As a prolific reader, no book has touched me so profoundly as this. We've long since airbrushed death from our lives refusing to accept it as an essential part of life.

Review

Gawande explains how we have become so focused on medicalising death we have all lost our way in determining what is important to us and to our patients. Just like the operating theatre's STOP moment, he urges us to stop and think about what we are trying to achieve for each other and whether we are going about it in the best possible way. This book has changed how I think, how I practice and how much I'd like anyone who is going to be caring for me to have read it.